#gin-and-tonic-history

#gin-and-tonic-history

"Our study confirmed that in an environment of loud noise, our sense of taste is compromised. Interestingly, this was specific to sweet and umami tastes, with sweet taste inhibited and umami taste significantly enhanced," Robin Dando, one of the study's authors, told the Cornell Chronicle after the study came out.

Kina Lillet was still being made according to the original recipe that it launched with in the late 1800s - fruit liqueur, wine, and quinine.

The U.S. version lists 73 grams of sugar per 20-ounce bottle. The U.K. version lists 4.5 grams of sugar per 100 milliliters. Crunch the numbers, and you'll find the American Fanta has nearly three times the sugar as its counterpart across the pond - 12.4 grams per 100 milliliters versus 4.5. The thing is, the British version doesn't taste like it's missing anything.

Martinis sit at the heart of the Brutes menu, with a martini card allowing drinkers to customise their cocktails according to their preferred base spirit, style and garnish. That means you can have your martini dry, wet, dirty or brutal, and garnished with everything from blue cheese olives and gildas to pickled onion Monster Munch and chicken scratchings.

It can sometimes feel a bit of a bombardment with regards to new drinks products - there is a LOT being advertised on socials. So to cut through the noise, we always look at who's behind the products before anything else as it's a great way to determine what's not style over substance. The trend that's exciting us the most at the moment is a modern, solid quality approach; simple messaging, great packaging, and complex flavour.

One trend I'd happily see fade away in 2026 is the obsession with overly complicated, garnish-heavy cocktails that prioritize spectacle over balance. There's nothing wrong with a drink that looks beautiful, but when the garnish becomes the entire point of the drink, it often means the cocktail itself is an afterthought.

Fans of the Hot Toddy will love the warming, boozy flavors of a well-made Mulled Wine. This drink is about as timeless as it gets, with origins in ancient Rome. At its essence, it's a warm drink featuring red wine, orange slices, honey (or maple syrup), wintry spices and an additional spirit like brandy or whiskey (or any spirit you have on hand).

"I wouldn't say the bramble is the only way to enjoy contemporary gin, but it's absolutely one of the most flattering cocktails to highlight the category," says Justin Lavenue, co-owner of Austin's famed cocktail bar The Roosevelt Room. "Contemporary gins, which tend to lean away from heavy juniper and more toward citrus, floral, root, and herbaceous notes, shine in cocktails where those subtleties have room to breathe. Unlike many other gin-based classics, the bramble gives them exactly that platform."

If it's been a while, head over to your local bar. Tell the bartender you don't need to see their list of $36 artisanal craft cocktails, thank you. You don't want their watered-down fruit juice in a tiny glass, and if there's a teaspoon of tequila in there, you count yourself lucky. What you want is a Long Island Iced Tea. It's the strong magic potion you're looking for, and here at Esquire, we fully endorse it.

just before we collectively stumbled into this shitty timeline marred by "fake news" and idiot fascism, a journalist did that thing that journalism used to do: hold power to account. In this case, the power was Big Bay Leaf, and the reporter was Kelly Conaboy, writing for the Awl on a "vast bay leaf conspiracy" that-then as now-cons well-meaning home cooks into buying weird leaves that taste and smell like "nothing."